Updates with revenue details in paragraph 10

By Krystal Hu

Aug 20 (Reuters) - Enterprise software maker EliseAI has raised $250 million in a Series E funding round to expand its automation tools for the healthcare and housing industries, the company told Reuters.

The latest funding values the company at over $2.2 billion, doubling its valuation from about a year ago. Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz led the round, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners and existing investors such as Sapphire Ventures.

The New York-based company, which builds AI to automate customer service and operations, said it surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue $(ARR)$ earlier this year. The fresh capital will be used to fuel product innovation and double its roughly 300-person team over the next year, its CEO Minna Song told Reuters in an interview, with hiring plans across offices in New York, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago.

The funding highlights investor appetite for so-called vertical AI companies that build deeply integrated, industry-specific solutions rather than general-purpose models. For EliseAI, the capital provides the firepower to deepen its hold on the real estate market and scale its newer healthcare division, tackling costly administrative tasks in two of the economy's largest and most complex sectors.

"We've seen a fundamental shift in the market, from talking about AI to using it to solve really costly problems," Song said in an interview. "The demand from our customers was really strong, and so we decided that now is the time to invest in scaling."

EliseAI's platform is able to automate the entire resolution process by focusing on specific industries, said Alex Immerman, partner at Andreessen Horowitz.

"A vertical AI like ours will go really, really deep and will take that customer request and then handle every step that's required to resolve it," he said, including coordinating with vendors, scheduling, and ensuring compliance.

The company started by targeting the housing industry in 2017, and expanded its applications to healthcare since 2022, an industry it said is burdened by similar communication friction and manual processes. While the majority of its revenue still comes from the real estate market, the company says it has seen fast growth in healthcare.

With generative AI technology bursting onto the scene, its software can handle more complicated customer inquiries and workflows by integrating with models like the ones from OpenAI.

It serves Zillow Group and other rental managers, and touts its technology is currently used in one in eight apartments in the U.S. In healthcare, the company has been focusing on outpatient specialties, including dermatology and women's health, integrating with electronic health record systems to automate administrative work.

(Reporting by Krystal Hu in Toronto; Editing by Stephen Coates)